Today, Le Monde has a
long article on the Institut Gustave Roussy, the main center for cancer treatment in France. It's an emotional rollercoaster to read it, but not as much as the
second article alongside it, which is about the center for children diseases within the Institute, where my son has spent quite a bit of time in the past 18 months. Our doctor, Jacques Grill, is interviewed, and I take this opportunity to salute him.
The Google translation of that article is oddly easy to understand, with an added note of poetry which is fitting, I think.
It concludes with the words I used in the title, a literal translation of "un pied de nez à la maladie" (thumbing your nose to disease).
Read it (I have copied the google translation below, with very slight edits), and don't forget to enjoy life.
Delicate treatment of the children and their families
One does not penetrate to the 9th floor of the Institute Gustave-Roussy (IGR) without a certain apprehension. Cancer is an unjust disease, but when this injustice strikes children, the pain and the distress often exceed the words. The department of pediatry is however all but a sad place: the drawings of children paper the walls, the toys encumber the corridor, the families which discuss around a coffee, the service holds as much the place of life as of the unit of care. With a decency, like a reserve, which reigns here more still than in the remainder of the hospital.
First European center of paediatric oncology, the service accomodated nearly 1 900 children in 2005, consultation, hospital of day or for a prolonged hospitalization. Extremely rare diseases, cancers of the child are cured in 75 % of the cases, but this proportion is weaker with the IGR, which receives the most critical cases. Here, the assumption of responsibility of the child falls under the accompaniment of all the family. "Nobody can suppose in the way in which a relative can react vis-a-vis the disease , explains Doctor Olivier Hartmann, head of service. Some will be rolled, others between-will tear, but the majority will find resources extraordinary to support their child."
Often, the mothers force the respect. Like Veronique, mom of Tuanaki, arrived urgently from Tahiti with an inflated belly due to a very advanced tumour with the stomach. Engaged in a race speed with cancer, Tuanaki already followed two cures of chemotherapy, which it answered well. "the treatment must be fast to destroy the most tumoral cell , explains Veronique, by cherishing the head of his/her son. If all occurs well, we will be able to set out again in June." Very tired, the young woman does not let anything show through with her child. "It is necessary to be very patient for Tuanaki because the disease made irritable, him which was very câlin. And then, it suffers much from separation from with his father who had to go back to Tahiti for work."
The treatments, which last between four and eighteen months, upset the family lives deeply. It is necessary to be organized to take turns near his child, to face the financial problems thus generated. The team thus puts all works about it to decrease times of hospitalization and to make so that the children continue their residence treatment. " the parents must quickly know to locate the clinical signs and to learn with on taking care the treatments , explains Pascale Usubelli, head nurse. We share to the maximum our knowledge with them to decrease to them worry."
It is often impossible when the disease worsens. With an extreme delicacy, Doctor Jacques Grill, specialist in the cerebral tumours of the child, receive Damien and his parents in consultation. Damien A 24 years, has suffered for several years from a cancer become metastasic. For a few days, it has presented symptoms (crispations of the face, jumpings of the chin) which make think of an epilepsy. His/her father and his mother seek a reason not to despair. Jacques Grill does not hide to them that the new treatment "will be certainly long" . The atmosphere has the heaviness of lead. Damien flickers of the eyes. His/her mother takes the hand to him.
By contrast, the small patient who succeeds to him is a sunbeam. Kathleen, 3 years, small braids and air mutineer, has a tumour of less than 2 cm in diameter in the center of the brain, the not very evolutionary shape of cancer. No one would never have known anything of it if the tumour had not weighed on its pituitary gland, starting a beginning of puberty. In its case, there are nothing to make, Kathleen takes just a treatment which slows down its puberty.
" Today, it is super , smiles Dr. Grill, one does not want to annoy it with an intervention which could be dangerous. Its tumour will certainly not grow bigger and it will live normally with it." Kathleen hums a song while listening to it. It sets out again with bell-foot with its mom, like a splendid foot of nose to the disease.
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